September 28, 2010

A recent Google search of “spiritual evolution quotes” led me to a brilliant mind who spoke specifically about the focal point of this blog, the intersection of spirituality and history. I was led to the words of none other than Albert Einstein. Einstein believed in following his intuition (the spirit moving in the individual), and he understood our interconnectedness with one another and with the universe.

Many people believe that Einstein was an atheist, but this is far from the truth. Rather, he saw the Divine in the order, rationality, and harmony that he found while searching for the underlying principles of the universe. After making his ground-breaking discoveries, including the general theory of relativity, he spent the remaining decades of his life trying to discern what he called “unified field theory“, a single law that would encompass all the fundamental forces of nature. Einstein himself had this to say about his unfulfilled quest, which many of his contemporaries considered foolish:

“Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us closer to the secret of the ‘Old One.’ I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.”

“When considering the actual living conditions of present day civilised humanity from the standpoint of even the most elementary religious commands, one is bound to experience a feeling of deep and painful disappointment at what one sees. For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one’s fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in the school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection.”

Einstein made this statement in 1948, but it seems to me that it describes today’s political and economic scene rather well.

I am repeatedly disheartened when hate- and fear-mongering political dialogue comes from people who cloak themselves in the garb of religiosity, and who apparently believe that we are incapable of rising above greed as a motivating principle to live by.

Einstein had similar sentiments in his day:

“There are pessimists who hold that such a state of affairs is necessarily inherent in human nature; it is those who propound such views that are the enemies of true religion, for they imply thereby that the religious teachings are utopian ideals and are unsuited to afford guidance in human affairs.”

I believe that humans are destined for more, for better than this, and that in time we will learn to support, rather than break down one another. It will not be religious dogma, but the human spirit, harbored within each individual soul, that will take the world to this better place. All in good time…

July 16, 2010

“Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless.” -Lech Walesa, human rights activist, Polish president, Nobel laureate (b. 1943)

We’ve got to stop passing the buck.

On this, and perhaps nothing else, I agree with Republican Mike Huckabee, who spoke on July 4 at the “part religious revival, part political rally” at First Baptist Church here in Charlotte.

The 2008 Wall Street debacle, said Mike, was caused less by a lack of regulation or a failure in finance policy than by the business traders’ flouting of ethical principles. Huckabee called on his audience “to get involved in politics as a way of restoring America’s moral bearings.”

Yes, we have ethics problems in America, where greed and treating one another with contempt have become socially acceptable behaviors.

And yes, we had all better get involved. The two recent collossal regulatory failures, first of financial markets and now of oil producers, are compelling evidence that government regulators can’t save us from ourselves. The regulators and top managers at the industries they regulate play musical chairs, and the interests the regulators protect the best are their own, not ours. Our legislators, who write the regulations, are also part of this game.

But if the powers that be want to play musical chairs, it’s the American people who turn the music on and off, and it is time we stop letting ourselves be the ones who end up without a chair.

Even as we despair that government as we know it has become gridlocked and corrupted, new forms of citizen involvement are evolving that may dramatically change the way government and politics work in our country. For example, social networking sites can now connect us individually with organizations that can keep us informed about issues we care about. These new organizations make it easy to contact legislators and can make us aware of other, perhaps new ways to take personal action. (This link will take you to a MSNBC report on the BP Makes me Sick Coalition.)

These new non-governmental organizations are embryonic, but hopefully the period from gestation to maturity of this new modus operandi will be short, just as the evolutionary cycle of new technologies has accelerated in recent years.

It seems to me that systemic change is necessary for us to work our way out of the mess we have gotten ourselves into. As the saying goes, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got.” In so many areas–energy policy, education, national and individual fiscal status, health care, the environment, even the way we produce our food–we have gotten ourselves into situations that make us vulnerable both as individuals and as a nation.

So it is as individuals that we must find a way to act that will change the course of our nation. That is the way our system of government was designed to work, and if there is a system of government on this planet that offers more hope to the individual, I and the millions of immigrants that clamor to our shores don’t know about it.

So, evolve people, evolve! Don’t wait for somebody else to fix things for you, because we are all in this together. You and me and Mike Huckabee are all in the same boat, and we all better start rowing, even if just to keep from capsizing, while we figure out which way leads us out of the storm.

April 27, 2010

Why did I name my blog “free for all?” Because I believe that it was destiny that led to the unfurling of individual freedom, starting in America. Going forward, people are destined to consciously, explicitly, and freely choose to live in ways that will benefit the good of all people.

Here’s the back story. Aboriginal people nurtured our continent in pristine condition for millenia, no doubt awaiting our arrival. Western civilization stumbled upon these shores, claiming to have discovered them, and soon appropriated a wide swath of the land. In time, our country gained political independence, and our Founding Fathers devised a brilliant new political system that allowed unprecedented freedom for the individual in this “new” land.

It has taken a few centuries, but we have now largely succeeded in extending basic human rights to all subsets of people in our country. The question now becomes “what are we to use this freedom for?”

Many people seem to believe that America was founded in order that the world might have “capitalism.” Was it not destiny that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the year that America became an independent nation?

Smith’s work, in fact, referred to a free market economy–the term “capitalism” was not used until the 1850s. Smith believed that when individuals independently pursue their own selfish good, it is as if an “invisible hand” operates to bring about the greatest common good.

Undeniably, the partnership of free people and free markets has led to unprecedented innovation and wealth creation. But our country’s history is also a tale of exploitation of both human beings and natural resources. Repeatedly, the American people have chosen to limit the exercise of free markets by law in order to achieve what they perceived as a greater common good.

For better or for worse, the “invisible hand” has caused wealth to accrue disproportionately to the United States, and Americans consume a highly disproportionate share of the world’s natural resources. But as people and markets are freed around the world, other countries’ demands for their share of natural resources will increase. As predicted decades ago, the world now faces the limits of sustainable growth on our planet. Now that we have reached this barrier, I don’t think we can expect the unguided “invisible hand” to automatically deliver the greatest “common good.”

Where do we go from here? I do not claim to know.

But what I believe, and what I plan to write about, is that history is the tapestry of the evolution of the human spirit. The circuitous path of history inevitably led to a world where an increasing number of individuals are free to live as they choose. Freedom allows the human spirit to grow and to soar. But freedom entails a requirement for self-management and self-control. Just as inevitably, destiny will allow the human spirit to continue its upward spiral, and free people around the world will learn to cooperatively manage market power to achieve the common good.

The alternatives are self-annihilation with the weapons humans have devised in the last century, as the world’s people continue the eternal battle over natural resources. Or the planet itself could bring a cataclysmic end to human existence.